From bathhouse to casino: Ax becomes a spa town

From the years right after the Revolution, Ax already counted at least five thermal establishments: the Couloubret, the Teich and the Breilh, as well as the Fort and Montmorency baths. They were scattered around the old town centre, still enclosed within its walls. The 1821 plan shows several of them.

The Couloubret is the oldest. It was founded around 1780, a few years after the rediscovery of the thermal waters, according to the Inventaire du patrimoine. In 1785, it belonged to the commune, which leased it to Antoine Authier-Orlu; the works were unfinished. Sold as national property, it passed to the surgeon Jean-Baptiste Boulié, who at the same time bought the Teich spring. By 1821, it was an elongated building with a corridor onto which ten cubicles opened, housing twelve bathtubs.

Boulié founded the Teich around 1800. The 1821 plan counts around fifty bathtubs spread across 24 cubicles, along with a pool and two steam baths, housed in pavilions on the banks of the Oriège. The Teich was then the only establishment in Ax with a pool, steam baths and latrines. The Breilh, meanwhile, was begun in 1815 by Jean Simon Sicre, owner of the town’s oldest hotel, who had realised the advantage he could draw from the hot water flowing through his garden, according to the town hall. The common model of the time was the individual bathing cubicle.

The Teich, more than any other, tells the story of the change in scale. Around 1863–1865, it was largely rebuilt at the instigation of Jeanne-Marie Rivière, Boulié’s heir, to a design by surveyor Laurens: a long building ending in two pavilions, with a central projecting section and, on the ground floor, two rows of cubicles fronted by covered galleries of fourteen bays each. A floor was added above. This layout is essential, the Inventaire notes, since all later alterations would preserve its main lines.

In the 1890s, the establishment changed again. It now belonged to the Compagnie générale des thermes d’Ax, founded in 1879. The south building was raised, the north building entirely rebuilt, and the space between them roofed over. The result was a large gallery lit by seven zenithal glass roofs, divided by cast-iron columns, which served as a waiting room and reading room and opened eastward onto the park. The Teich also received an advanced device, Dr Lajaunie’s "vaporigène," which heated the water before sending it into patients' nasal passages.

The town hall describes a 90-metre facade, with a projecting section of 33 openings cut by a monumental gateway, two recessed wings adorned with terraces and tall chimneys, and an immense hall. A hotel to the south, from the mid-19th century, and a laundry to the west completed the ensemble, but both buildings have since disappeared. Today, of the late-19th-century interior, only the central staircase remains.

In 1863, shareholders founded the Société de l’établissement Modèle d’Ax. There were 72 of them, including Foix banker Charles Capdeville, who contributed the land. Departmental engineer Jules François took part in the design and helped install specific types of showers, of the kind found at the same period in Aix or Plombières: circle showers, seated showers. Works were interrupted by ownership disputes, since the springs stood on communal land rather than on the plot Capdeville had acquired. The Modèle finally opened in 1868 and quickly became the resort’s most popular establishment, being the newest and therefore the most modern.

The building runs alongside the Lauze: an elongated body on a base, pavilions at either end, and a central section made up of two galleries carried on nine columns, one over the river, the other over the street. By 1913, it housed three bathing sections with 30 cubicles, 4 drinking fountains, 7 showers, 3 local baths and 8 inhalation devices, and a steam room. A "radiovaporarium," a kind of natural hammam carved into the rock, completed the ensemble — like the one at Luchon, but smaller.

The original building is gone. Entirely demolished in the mid-1970s, it was replaced by a building combining apartments and a thermal establishment, largely destroyed by a fire in 1992 before being rebuilt in the late 1990s. Today it is the resort’s only bathing establishment open year-round.

Over the course of the century, the establishments passed from private hands into those of a company. The Compagnie générale des thermes d’Ax was founded in 1879 and owned the Teich from the outset. By 1891, it owned the resort’s other establishments and had become majority shareholder in the Société du Modèle.

The town changed along with them. Between the 1820s and the 1920s, new buildings rose along the three main roads: multi-storey houses and small apartment blocks, often intended as seasonal lodgings, several major hotels, and a few villas surrounded by gardens. In the old town, rooms and apartments were fitted out for patients, and most of the facades were redone. A square was laid out in 1882 in the heart of the old town, the Place Roussel. In 1888, the train reached Ax [link to the article on the railway, forthcoming], and a decree of 8 March 1913 designated the commune a hydromineral resort. The town hall adds that Ax was one of the first towns to have mains sewers, running water and electricity, and that modernity progressed there faster than in the rest of the department.

A casino was among the amenities expected of a resort. Ax wanted one from as early as 1882. That year, Sophrone Sicre de Breilh, owner of the establishment of the same name, launched a plan for a municipal casino between the church, to the south, and the Sorgeat stream, to the north. It would never be built, not least because it would have occupied part of the old cemetery, which would have banned any digging for at least ten years.

A new project emerged in the 1890s. In 1894, the commune granted land to Edmond de Wézèle, a London resident, to build and operate a casino for 50 years. The site shifted westward, closer to the Couloubret and further from the church. Two Paris architects, G. Vidal and E. Bertrand, drew up plans in 1895. But work never really got underway, and the commune dropped the concessionaire in 1901. Further projects followed without success.

Work finally resumed in 1903, and the casino opened fairly quickly, even though it was not finished. In 1907, the theatre hall was still covered in tarpaulin during the season, for lack of a roof, so that performances could go ahead. The gaming room, by contrast, appears to have been finished: the concessionaire obtained permission to run baccarat tables there, in addition to the "petits chevaux" already in place.

In 1908, the town hall entrusted the completion of the works to Pierre Mouré, an architect from Toulouse. Work continued until 1911: closing in the hall, completing the rear terrace, building two bell towers. The building then presented an elongated plan flanked by two terraces, with a central hall giving access, to the west, to a café and gaming rooms, and to the east, to the theatre.

The Belle Époque casino is also a building that kept transforming. In 1925, major repairs were made to the roof and the hall’s ceiling. In 1927, the commune leased it to the Compagnie immobilière et foncière France-Indochine for twenty years, starting 1 January 1928. The specifications were ambitious: build a large hotel within the first five years, construct a performance hall behind the casino seating nearly 1,000, and transform the building. It was probably at this point that the terrace was widened, shops were installed beneath it, the gaming rooms moved east, and a café-concert hall was fitted out to the west.

The result is a symmetrical, T-shaped building, with a broad stone staircase and a reinforced-concrete terrace lined with columns, its ceiling housing three small domes that act as sound-resonance chambers. The pavilions are rendered in pink, the frames picked out in white, the columns painted pale yellow. The upper parts of the bell towers were likely demolished in the 1950s, and major works in the early 2000s reworked the performance hall. A 2017 description places there a café-concert room, a performance hall, gaming rooms and a media library.

One nuance is worth keeping in mind. The town hall speaks of a golden age for the spa town lasting until the Second World War. The historian Steve Hagimont, by contrast, devotes an article to a 19th-century tourism and thermal boom that was "hindered" at Ax.

What remains uncertain. Dates vary between sources: the town hall places the founding of the Teich in 1787 and its inauguration in 1893, while the Inventaire has it founded around 1800, rebuilt around 1864, and expanded in the 1890s. The casino’s official opening date remains to be pinned down.

Sources consulted